VITAMINSTHE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY(And Their Relationship to Dysbiosis & Gut Health)

"A primary cause for incorrect flora is often a diet that contains either too much sugar, fruit, fruit juice, alkaline water, or raw food such as salad, sweets, alcohol and even medical or over-the-counter drugs.In fact, taking too many vitamins, minerals or herbs can upset the digestion enough to unbalance the flora." -Dr. Lawrence Wilson (MD) from Your Intestinal Flora

"I don't believe that vitamins are essential ingredients of a healthy diet, but rather I contend that all of the necessary nutritional chemicals are produced by the microorganisms of the gut. I have previously discussed the gut flora (bacteria and fungi) as the source of most vitamins."-Dr. Art Ayers

"Dr. Oz and the general biomedical community promote the idea that vitamin supplements or in foods are needed or improve health. Of course, several research studies show that typical multivitamin supplements or the levels of vitamins in "enriched" foods do not provide improvements in health. Since gut flora produce all of the needed vitamins, this should be no surprise." Art Ayers from Vitamin C, Guinea Pigs, Limeys and Gut Worms

"Almost all multivitamins are from synthetics. The same goes for fortified foods. There’s a good reason for this. Synthetic vitamins are cheaper to make and usually more stable. This means they can last on shelves for months or years, be added to foods in high doses, and create small dense tablets packed with insane amounts of every type of vitamin. These vitamins are allowed to call themselves “natural” even when they are actually synthetic because scientists say the synthetics are virtually identical to the ones found in food. The way these compounds are made is not remotely similar to the metabolic processes that plants and animals use to create them. The finished product is also usually a compound not exactly the same form as any found in nature. These synthetic vitamins, according to a multitude of studies, are not as bioavailable, absorbable, or usable. These “virtually identical” vitamins are not what we find in natural foods, not recognizable to the body, hard on the kidneys, and can often be treated as toxins." From Natural vs. Synthetic Vitamins – What’s the Big Difference? at the sunwarrior website

What have I been telling folks for over two decades? Only that cheap vitamins are just that --- cheap vitamins. Remember the study that Johns Hopkins put out just two short years ago and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements)? This study (it was actually an editorial) concluded that, "Antioxidants, folic acid and B vitamins, and multivitamin and mineral supplements are ineffective for preventing mortality or morbidity due to major chronic diseases. Supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful. These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention." DR. ROYAL LEE and other giants in the "Whole Food Movement" (DR. WESTON PRICE, DR. FRANCIS POTTENGER, DR. JACK La LANE, etc) were saying similar things nearly a century ago.

Just a couple of days ago I saw where Mal Wart and several other similar retailers (GNC was in the mix as well) were busted for selling herbal supplements; the vast majority of which (79%) contained zero (that would be none) of the active herbal ingredients they claimed to contain on the label (echinacea, ginseng, St. John’s wort, garlic, ginkgo biloba, saw palmetto). And now this. Dr. Art Ayers latest blog post (Healthy Gut Microbiota Means: No Supplements, No Cleanses, No Drugs, No Processed Foods) twists our brain capacity a little bit more --- or maybe a lot more. In this post (as well as several previous ones) Ayers reveals that (the following points were cherry picked from his latest post).........

"A healthy, functional gut microbiota (bacteria and fungi) supplies all of the vitamins needed, daily multivitamins are not beneficial, vitamin deficiencies are a symptom of gut dysbiosis, spiking your diet with multivitamins may disrupt your microbiota, because vitamins are actually the chemical signals used for communications between bacteria in biofilms, bowel cleanses damage gut microbiota, chronic inflammation is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency, and most medicines have substantial antibiotic activity."

The more I learn about GUT HEALTH and DYSBIOSIS, the more I realize that solving it is the key to everything related to ill health. And the really good news in this post is that Ayers lets us know that our plight is not hopeless, "damaged gut microbiotas / immune systems can be fixed". We learn some things about this process of "fixing" that besides HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE, you can find in the "Gut Health" link above. Oh; and I almost forgot to mention something really important. After warning people about taking vitamins or partaking of foods with added vitamins ("fortified"), he makes an interesting statement. "Try some whole foods instead."

Is Ayers correct? Just remember that no matter what anyone tries to tell you, there is a dramatic difference between WHOLE FOOD NUTRITION and SYNTHETIC NUTRITION. It's not that people can't get drug-like effects from SYNTHETIC VITAMINS (ANTIOXIDANT EFFECTS from mega doses of Synthetic Vitamin C, for instance). However, using drugs has consequences --- even if those drugs happen to be "natural" vitamins ("natural" is almost always the code word for "synthetic"), usually in the form of MONOTHERAPIES. I would strongly recommend that you read Dr. Ayer's post on this matter.

The best thing about using Standard Process Nutritional Supplements in our office is that they are made from food --- plants and animals. The best thing about Standard Process is that when you get the Whole Food Vitamin / Mineral Complex, it doesn't take much. Less is more. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A little bit of Whole Vitamin Complex from nature is typically much better than a whole bunch of an isolated chemical fraction synthesized in a lab. None of this plays well in our if-a-little-is-good-a-lot-must-be-better society. Food or food-based supplements are where it's at, because anything that puts our body OUT OF PHYSIOLOGICAL HOMEOSTASIS essentially becomes a toxin. To see more on this phenomenon (as well as a free generic template to help you start getting your life back), HERE'S THE POST.

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Dr. Schierling completed four years of Kansas State University's five-year Nutrition / Exercise Physiology Program before deciding on a career in Chiropractic. He graduated from Logan Chiropractic College in 1991, and has run a busy clinic in Mountain View, Missouri ever since. He and his wife Amy have four children (three daughters and a son).